Veil of Lies

it is…” He shook his head, amazed that she managed to drag the words out of him. Again. “I don’t even know her. Not truly.” He let the thought of Philippa ripple in his mind. The thought stayed longer than anticipated. “She’s completely unsuitable. But she is intriguing.”

“Is she a client?”

“Of a sort…no…maybe.” He chuckled halfheartedly. “I don’t know.”

“I’m pleased that’s settled.”

“Truly, Nell, it does not bear discussing.”

“Then why do you look so sad?”

“I’m not sad!”

Jack pressed forward. “You would not wonder if you saw the lady,” he said, wincing under Crispin’s sharp glance. He opened his hands in apology. “It is true. She is something to behold.”

“When did you ever see her?” he asked.

“I’ve seen Madam Philippa Walcote before at market.” He whistled and winked at Eleanor. “Rich and beautiful.”

Crispin measured Jack before he sighed and slowly withdrew the portrait from his scrip and handed it to Eleanor.

“Oh, Crispin, she is fair. Is this a good likeness?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get it?”

“From her husband.”

Aghast, Eleanor slowly lowered the picture to the table. “Crispin Guest!”

“It’s not what you think—God’s teeth! I don’t know what you think! The husband is dead. He was murdered last night.”

She crossed herself and handed back the miniature as if it were the dead man himself. “Bless me! Crispin! Not you?”

His look of disdain mollified her, but only briefly.

“Well you cannot expect a woman who has recently lost a husband to look your way,” she said.

“That’s not—” He exhaled a long, bitter sigh. “What does it matter?” He clutched the portrait for a moment before he tossed it across the table. It clattered faceup. Philippa’s painted face gazed serenely toward the ceiling. “She is, after all, only a servant.”

“Only a servant? They do not paint portraits of servants.”

Jack made a grab for the jug, but Eleanor easily moved it from his reach. “She was a chambermaid in her master’s household,” Jack said in a loud whisper, looking back at Crispin. “And he married her! Now that’s a right smart lass.”

Eleanor nodded knowingly. “There’s many a lass who betters herself by marrying the master. It happens more often than you think.”

“Perhaps in the merchant class,” Crispin mumbled. “But knights do not marry their servants.”

Eleanor’s kind demeanor darkened. “Oh, it’s that again, is it?” She rose, her voice shrill. “It’s not that she won’t look twice at you; it’s that you scorn her class!”

Gilbert arrived at that moment, a barrel-shaped man with dark eyes and brown hair. Crispin glanced at him hopefully while Eleanor postured over him like a Fury, her mouth flapping and her finger wagging.

Flustered, Gilbert frowned at his wife. “What’s this? Wife, you’re too loud.”

“I am not loud enough!” she exclaimed, raising her voice. Some of the patrons turned, but those more used to this exchange slumped back over their cups and edged away.

Gilbert clutched her arm. “You will be still!” He looked at Crispin apologetically.

She shook him off. “I will not be still. This intolerable man, who has lived these eight years in this parish under our care and guidance, still cannot suffer the lower classes, even though he is now one of them.”

“Now Eleanor,” said Gilbert, lowering her to the bench beside him.

“He’ll drink our wine and beg our advice,” said Eleanor, “but when it comes to it, he’s a lord and we are peasants, and he will not demean himself with our lowly selves.”

Crispin set the cup aside. “Perhaps I should go.”

“Now Crispin,” said Gilbert, eyeing his wife. “There’s no need for that. It takes getting used to,” he said to her. “His state, I mean. Even after eight years. He’s been a nobleman for far longer than that. It’s in the blood.”

They talked about Crispin as if he weren’t sitting there. It didn’t matter. Crispin could not tell whether he flushed more from embarrassment or anger. “It is in the blood,” he said soberly.

Eleanor picked up the portrait and wagged it at Crispin. “If you have any love for this woman at all, nought should stand in your way. You’re not a grand knight any longer. Who could speak ill of you if you sought some happiness? Even amongst the lower classes.”

“I never said I loved her!” He stood, weaving slightly from the wine. He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind and swatted the air in a futile gesture. Gilbert took the little portrait from his wife and eyed it with raised brows, but Jack snatched it from his hands when Crispin made no move toward it, stuffed it in his tunic, and scurried ahead to open the tavern door for him.

Crispin called himself a fool ten times over. He never thought of himself as a man who wore his heart on his sleeve. It’s the drinking, that’s what it was. It loosened his tongue, unmanned him. And in front of Eleanor! His face warmed with a blush. Never again! Philippa Walcote was only a client. A client! Nothing more. He didn’t need these unnecessary complications in his life. Women. A dog was more satisfying companionship. At least they didn’t talk.

He lumbered into the street and soon heard Jack’s nimble steps behind. Crispin inhaled the sour odors of London’s poorer streets, silently lamenting the lost days where he rode aloft a fine horse, far from the muddy gutters and ingrained poverty of the city’s lower class. He used to throw them a few disks of silver in charity, but he never walked among them. And now walk he did.

He scowled the more he thought about his state but owed his temper to the wine and Eleanor’s harangue more than a querulous disposition.

They walked silently for a time before Jack nudged him.

Crispin slowed and stopped. The boy held out the little portrait to him. Dammit! He thought he was rid of that.

Jack raised it higher, urging it on him.

Sullenly, Crispin snatched it. He slipped it between the buttons of his coat and felt it slip down his shirt and settle near his midsection where the belt stopped it.

“Where are we going, Master?”

Crispin didn’t know. Distracted, that’s what he was. And by a silly portrait? His neck flushed. “Tell me, Jack. Is it so wrong?”

“Marrying better, you mean?” he said, not understanding Crispin’s question. “A servant marries a master. Their children marry better than they, and onward. Haven’t you heard them minstrel songs?”

“But that obscures everything. The race is mongrelized. What point is there at all in being born noble?”

Jack scowled and rolled his shoulders uneasily. “‘Mongrelized’? I ain’t certain of your meaning.” But by the scowl on his face Crispin guessed he was more certain than he let on. “But I see it all around us,” Jack went on. “Look at the Lord Mayor. He is a grocer, after all. The one before him was a draper. Nobility don’t sprout out of the ground like cabbages, do it? Where’d your family come from, eh?”

Crispin arched a brow. “My family was noble as far back as Adam and Eve.”

“’Slud!” Jack lifted his nose mockingly and straightened his shoulders as if they wore ermine. “Course, that ain’t the situation no more.” He seemed to relish saying it, and Crispin resisted the urge to strike him. “But if you should marry well, say Walcote’s widow, then you’d move up again.”

Crispin’s black mood deepened. “Marry in a class beneath me,” he said, voice deadly, “in order to advance? You must be mad.” He twisted. His cloak spun out around him like a raven’s wing.

“The trouble with you—begging your pardon, Master—is that you can’t forget yourself; your old self. You can’t let yourself be who you are now.”